My new record is called "Strjon" , the mediaeval name of my home village Stryn. Strjon means streaming river/waters referring to the Stryn river. The village is situated on the west-coast of Norway, in the very end of the fiord Nordfjord. When I go there to visit my family I still get astonished by the fantastic nature. In one way almost frightened by the glaciers hanging down from high abrupt mountains where avalanches are crashing down during the winter season, but also calm and relaxed by its beauty and majestic tranquillity this scenery represents. I grew up there and was constantly bombarded by this smashing nature for almost 20 years.

But of course, there are many more reasons for me to choose this title than just inspiration from nature. Most of the music comes from my own "library" of sounds and music created during my days at Stryn. At the age of 16 I started to make sketches and recorded lots of cassettes with electronic improvised sequences, and throughout the years loads of cassettes, dat tapes, minidiscs have been added to the pile of homemade studio sketches. My idea has been to look into those sounds and material to search for a history, moods and perhaps to understand a little bit more and maybe discover some reasons for why I play like I do. Ambitious, yes, but for me personally very challenging and important.

To help me, and to coordinate this work I chose Helge Sten as my producer and guide. I mentioned this idea to him some years ago and he really thought that angle was a very interesting starting point for making a record. Helge has created music based on some of my old soundscapes, he also plays the guitar on three of the tunes on this CD. Ståle Storløkken is also joining in on two tracks. Those sequences came alive in his studio in Trondheim where we met for some days to work on another project together. We ended up with some improvised material that we reorganized, or recomposed and that material became two songs on this record. I feel really privileged when I now for the third time release a record on Rune Grammofon. I would like to thank Helge and Ståle for making this happen and bringing in their superb knowledge. It is an honour to work with these two wizards.

The process of looking into old material has been exciting and it has left me with a hard-disc of 6 hours of sketches, and still much more stuff laying around in my studio, but that is a different story.